Is UFC 194 Conor McGregor’s biggest gamble yet?

“Vegas was and is a hard town that will make you pay for your inability to restrain your desires... If you have a weakness, Las Vegas will punish you" 

Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo Junior were still in their teens when Rothman, one of the the pre-eminent observers of the modern west of the US, penned that observation.

Yet it is the collective inability of the reluctant plumber from Crumlin and the reluctant bricklayer from Manaus to restrain their desires that has led them here to Las Vegas, the neon metropolis that was the focus of so much of the late Rothman’s life work.

McGregor’s desire was to fulfil his life’s aim and become a bona fide world champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. From the very outset of his blazing trail through the mixed martial arts world, that put him on a collision course with Aldo. It is the Brazilian’s desire to remain cemented in situ as the featherweight - and arguably pound-for-pound - king that means Aldo is still the pinnacle for McGregor all these years later.

And so the City of Sin will be ready to witness some weaknesses be brutally punished at the MGM Grand Garden Arena late tonight local time. The headline bout of UFC 194, the unification of the featherweight division’s immovable champion and its unstoppable interim champion, is in or around the biggest in the organisation’s history.

The battalions of McGregor footsoldiers are again here for the occasion, in spite of financial and logistical struggles, bringing weak Euro to a costly town so close to Christmas. They’ve made the pilgrimage because this is the one that, in spite of taking forever to get here, seemed bigger than all that has gone before. More than any of McGregor’s other fights in this sport perhaps, tonight will truly be a clash of cultures.

This whole show, the self-proclaimed fastest growing sport on the planet yet one that appears to spawn haters at a rapid rate too, was put on the road by a man with a Manaus bloodline. When the UFC was founded in 1993 by Rorion Gracie, it was with the stated aim of proving that Brazilian jiu-jitsu was supreme to all other martial arts.

The most significant fighting dynasty there has ever been, the Gracies are maniacal in their quest to continually prove their brand is best. Aldo is another embodiment of that aim. He may not be as adored in his homeland as say, Anderson Silva, but he has ensured a Brazilian flag was always a constant on the UFC’s list of current champions. McGregor is trying to put a Tricolour on the wall for the first time.

Contrast that cultural history of fighting for Aldo and his countrymen with Ireland’s. On Thursday night a particularly good documentary, The Fighting Irish, aired on RTÉ and charted how McGregor has lit the fire in Ireland - that would be since 2013. The Gracies go back to the start of the last century. The green brigade have, well, some catching up to do.

“You’re going to see me go in there and get the win, and I don’t really care how I win, I care about winning,” said Aldo, about continuing his relentless run. “Really the only difference is I always beat Americans and this time I’m going to beat an Irishman.”

If Aldo - and Las Vegas - are to punish McGregor, then the storied, ferocious leg kicks that Aldo reels off will be key. They are the kind of physical experience, more accurately trauma, that us mortals cannot begin to understand.

In a brilliant opus last month entitled The Night We Faced Aldo, MMA chronicler Shaun Al-Shatti canvassed a host of men who have tried and failed to bring the Brazilian down from the summit.

Even an abridged flavour of the memories of three of them begins to get the message across.

“It was unbearable pain,” said Jonathan Brookins, knocked out by Aldo in 2008. “I’d probably say easily one of the most painful moments of my life was the freaking days after the fight.

“That dude will cut your muscle. He’ll cut it to where you’ll bleed inside of your leg — to where, to this day, man, my knee will still swell up and have fluid in it. It still has cartilage all out of place because Jose ripped so many of the muscles in my leg.”

The damage was equally traumatic for Kenny Florian. “I didn’t get full feeling in my legs back for months,” he said. “He was kicking the inside of my leg, which affected the nerves so much that it took about a full two months to really get feeling back. I would swipe my hand on the inside of my leg to see if I could feel it, and I couldn’t.”

Urijah Faber, McGregor’s opposing coach on the UFC’s in-house reality show, Ultimate Fighter, this season, also suffered at the shins of Aldo.

“Looking back, I remember actively having to hobble after him,” he said. “I felt like I was going to pass out from the pain by the time I did the post-fight interview.

“I’ve never been hit with a bat. But I think [that] would be kind of like how it feels to get hit with a bat. Over and over and over.”

But McGregor has his own lethal weapon. His gripping, gritty come-from-behind knockout of Chad Mendes here in July may have been built on his resilience, his ability to take a punch, get down and wrestle and bounce back up. But it was the utterly devastating power the southpaw possesses in his left hand that truly decided things.

The newly calm and collected McGregor has this week alluded to his movement skills as being the game-changer tonight. Being evasive and avoiding those killer kicks is essential but not being on the back foot against a man who loves to control the centre of the cage will be key too. McGregor’s superior reach is priceless in such circumstances. Yet, for all that, it’s hard not to imagine his favoured fist being at the fore should he make history here.

“I visualise entering the contest and being unpredictable,” the Notorious one, who has predicated ending the fight in the first four minutes, said this week. “I will pressure him, I will evade him, I will strike him with every limb.

“I will be a ghost in there. He will think that I’m there and then I’m not there. He will think that I’m not there and then I’ll be there. This will prove my point. I am number one.”

Tonight in the neon metropolis, a weakness will indeed be punished. Whose weakness? Time, like it always has, will tell.